138 NOTES ON SOME OTHER [1818 made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable. 'Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and handsome Achilles, at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit to his friend Thermites!' Act iv. 5. Speech of Ulysses: 0, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give a coasting welcome ere it comes — Should it be eaccosting?' eAccost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian in the phrase— 'give a coasting welcome', (fcoasting* being taken as the epithet and adjective of ewel- come*,) that had the following words been 'ere they land', instead of 'ere it comes', I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ere it comes', Conolanus This play illustrates the wonderfully philo- sophic impartiality of Shakespeare's politics. His own country's history furnished him with no matter but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, you see Shakespeare's good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown's aristocracy of spirit.